


Accustomization

by Harukami



Category: DRAMAtical Murder (Visual Novel), DRAMAtical Murder - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Past Rape/Non-con, Rape Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-02-07
Packaged: 2018-03-11 00:17:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3308561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harukami/pseuds/Harukami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aoba gets used to the various daily elements of life with Mink, and pushes forward against the complications.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Accustomization

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sumi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sumi/gifts).



**.1. Acclimatization**

These are things Aoba is getting used to: 

Speaking a language that feels flat and throaty compared to what he's used to, knowing he's awkward, the store's owner laughing at him softly and encouraging him regardless. The cold outside and how it cuts off to the roaring heat of the fire in the fireplace when he comes home. The sight of Mink, thinner and softer than he remembers him in his thoughts (though still large), looking up at him over his glasses when he comes in, tiny beads and tinier wires held delicately between large fingers. Knowing intimately that those hands are as capable of careful craftsmanship and gentle touches as they are of leaving bruises. The deep acknowledging rumble of Mink's voice when he says "I'm home". The smell of spices on his fingers when he makes dinner on the wood stove-top. Making food for a palate that isn't the one he grew up with, getting offhanded corrections or simple words of praise based on how it turns out. 

Talking casually with Mink. Touching Mink casually. Feeling the warmth growing against his arm as he leans against Mink and catches up on the internet (with his coil and with Ren's soft calming presence at his side, both consistencies in this sea of change); the warmth spreads in that point of contact. Mink quietly reading at his side. Occasionally Aoba will ask about something he notices on the page and Mink will explain it. Sometimes, more rarely, Mink will check to see if Aoba minds having his attention taken, and will then spontaneously read a bit out loud to him in that low warm rumble of a voice. 

Usually not, though. Aoba has to initiate most things, and that's something he has to get used to as well.

At night he showers or bathes, usually alone, the water hot from the attached water heater outside; other times, when he works up to it past the excited, anxious knot of his stomach, he calls Mink to fill the rest of the space in the tub with his bulk, so with the shower curtain closed it feels like they're packed together, water slick-skin rubbing as they clean each other, kiss, touch each other.

After the bath (alone or not) and after drying off, sometimes they make love. This, too, is something Aoba has to initiate, and Mink has never refused him when he does. Even on the long days, when Mink has walked from town to town, carried supplies back, cut wood, all the rest, Mink doesn't refuse him. Aoba asks, once, when he worries himself into actually verbalizing things: "Do you feel you don't have the right to refuse me?"

Mink watches him for a long moment, then sighs, reaches over, runs his fingers gently over the braids lying against the back of Aoba's neck (this, too, a thing to get used to; the different texture, locks of braided hair and the softness of down feathers), and says, "I have the right to refuse. It's important. I don't want you to think otherwise. But you make me feel young again."

Aoba isn't sure if that's exactly an answer to what he was asking, but it's close enough.

At bedtime -- regardless of if they had made love or not, if Aoba had bathed alone or not -- Mink meets him at the door to Aoba's room and kisses him goodnight softly and wishes him good dreams. He doesn't sleep with Aoba, usually. It's only been a couple of times: that first night they decided to move forward and create something out of this mess between them, and when Aoba was sick and needed watching over. 

It means that Aoba wakes up from his dreams at a loss. Sometimes they're nightmares, the tangled sheets turning into strong muscular arms that he can't struggle against, the comforter a weight on his body. Sometimes they're erotic dreams that he wakes up from instead. The line between the two is so thin sometimes that he can only define them by whether or not he feels fear or longing. This, itself, is probably why Mink sleeps in a separate room, he thinks one morning with sweat sticking his bangs to his forehead, with come sticking his thighs to the sheets, with his breaths uneven, too-fast. For that space when he wakes up to decide which is which without the reason for both right there beside him, too immediate to handle. Though other times, they're just normal dreams. Dull dreams of daily life, or nostalgic dreams of a place he doesn't think of as home any more, dreams of his parents, dreams that make no sense. Those he wishes he could wake up to beside Mink, and share them with him. He imagines it sometimes in the mornings, turning over and nudging Mink's hunched back until Mink grumbles, rolls over, looks at him with one sleep-bleary soft gold eye, and telling him, 'I had the strangest dream', or 'my dream was so dull that I just had to check I was really here', or 'I dreamed about the other me again; what does it mean?' or 'Can we go back again sometime? I miss my grandmother', or anything else that comes to mind to say when he first wakes up.

But Mink knows the value of space, and while Aoba does wish things were different enough that the normal dreams could overwhelm the others, he's not sure they are. He's grateful to Mink, in some ways, for knowing that without them having to talk about it. This is what they have to deal with. Mink created it; Aoba decided they'd deal with it anyway. So they have to take it one step at a time, and Mink will never force Aoba down that path faster than he wants to, is too self-aware to set up situations where he can do so accidentally. Aoba has Ren anyway, sleeping at his feet each night; him he can hold to his chest and talk about whatever comes to mind, so he's not alone.

He wonders what Mink dreams about, and what Mink wants to talk about when he first wakes up in the morning.

 

**.2. Permission**

As he gets used to things, they become comfortable, and as they become comfortable, he wants to reach out to try new things, but doing so is -- naturally -- up to him. He's aware it's the same process, just further steps along. That he wanted x and took a long time to get used to it, and now he wants y and needs to get used to that too. Those variables could be anything. Probably will be anything. He's sure a number of things will come up that he'll want to tackle as other things stop being overwhelming. Mink's voice, for one thing. Mink hasn't raised his voice once since the time he panicked when Aoba went out all day without warning; Aoba knows what happened there. Mink was afraid for him; Aoba couldn't help but read that tone as anger, and so Mink has bitten down on his own emotions to avoid frightening Aoba with the place where tones can overlap. Raised voices, tensed muscles, moving in ways to box him in, anything. Aoba is aware of that, and doesn't want to take that one on yet. That can be a "z" as those variables go. But it's on his list. He doesn't want Mink to have to maintain a strict control over himself for the rest of his life, and, more importantly, he craves getting to the point where he himself no longer reacts out of trauma.

But he's not there yet, and that, he thinks, is fine. Mink's always stressed that. Walk this path one foot at a time. And, too, if Aoba ever can't take moving forward, it's fine to leave. It's Aoba's choice. Aoba holds that thought to him with a fierce intensity of love and keeps moving on. Some things are in the distance. Some things are in the now. It's amazing how okay that is.

But there are things he does find himself craving more as he gets acclimated to the daily things, to routines and casual touch and cooking and the rest.

And embarrassingly, the thing he finds occupying his thoughts is mostly sex.

They _have_ sex, of course. Good sex, warm sex, love-making. It's not something Aoba's ever even conceived of having a complaint about. Mink runs hands over him, sometimes takes him in his mouth, sometimes lets Aoba do that; lies Aoba back and is tender and careful entering him, moving inside of him. Aoba doesn't want that to stop but as time goes on he wants to try other things as well.

At first he argues with himself; Mink wouldn't want it. Mink's a very traditional person. Even as he chides himself, however, he knows it isn't true. Mink has lived in a lot of different ways and knows a lot of things. Even if he prefers the simple life like this, Mink won't be scandalized by anything he has to offer. Still, he's reluctant. For one thing, Mink's sexuality isn't any less complicated than his own; for all that Aoba knows the power dynamics _he_ has to deal with, he knows Mink had a very long period of his own life where he had no power either. These quiet and gentle nights of lovemaking don't put the power in anyone's hands. And that aside, the mere idea of changing up their habits has his heart pounding and palms sweating.

Still. Nothing will happen that he doesn't initiate and so eventually, months after he's realized he wants to, he blurts it out: "Can we e-experiment sometime?"

Mink's in the middle of carving a wooden trinket; still, despite the non-sequiturial nature of the comment, he barely seems startled, though his knife hesitates on the wood. "Sexually?" he clarifies.

"Well. Yeah. I mean..." he tries to think of an explanation, fails. "Yeah."

"If you like."

That answer is almost too calm, too blasé. Aoba huffs air out into his cheeks. "You're not even asking what?"

"I don't need to," Mink says. There's a thread of amusement rumbling in his voice. "You're not the kind of person who'd ask for something I wouldn't be willing to do."

"You don't know that."

"I also can't think of anything I wouldn't be willing to do for you."

Aoba can feel his cheeks flaming: "What if I wanted to top?"

"Sure," Mink says, and his knife begins shaping the wood again.

"R-really?"

"Mm."

"What if -- other things?"

Mink chuckles, soft. "Unspecific."

"Bondage," Aoba shoots out.

"If you like, sure."

"T-toys?"

"You can pick some out online."

Embarrassment, excitement, irritation war inside him until he thinks he's going to burst. "Well, why didn't you say any of this before, then?!"

"You didn't want to ask before. It's fine. What you want, we'll try." Mink doesn't say: as long as you initiate, as long as you pick what to do, as long as you take the lead. He doesn't have to. That's how they live now. 

But that's a relief, too.

 

**.3. Initiation**

In the end, he chickens out of trying too much too fast. He still wants to do it, imagines Mink with tied hands -- maybe no cuffs or collar, nothing like Mink used to have to wear, but rope or tape or something, imagines taking control and pressing inside and watching Mink unable to do anything but react, imagines interspersing quiet love-making with something more aggressive, something which he can control, imagines the freedom of having rough sex without arousal churning into something cold in his stomach.

But jumping too quickly into it will worry them both, and there'll be plenty of time for that later.

In the end, what he starts with is simply a reverse of position, straddling Mink, feeling Mink's deep heavy breaths against him, kissing him and leaning over him and being the one to stroke over his skin while those large hands come up and cradle his hips in their palms. He grinds down over Mink, relaxes himself, slides Mink into himself and rides him whimpering and moaning, as Mink's hands, no longer from his hips so Aoba will have full freedom of movement, knead the bedsheets on either side of his body until Aoba curls forward, takes Mink's arms, urges them around him.

And then they move together a little fast, a little urgently, Mink holding him close and rocking into his body. Their skin sticks together sweatily, and in this position, moving over him, Aoba can control exactly how deep Mink goes in him, can slow things down when he wants, speed up, and he comes almost as soon as he realizes that, thighs shaking, hips pumping frantically to drag an orgasm out of Mink while he himself is still high with it. 

After, they catch their breath, Aoba still seated on Mink, still bent forward to curl against him. His come is spread stickily between them.

It's such a small thing, he thinks dazedly. It isn't even that different. But he feels like he's made a step forward. In other circumstances, it wouldn't be. But it's good for him. Understanding his freedom is good for him. Knowing Mink will never hold him to anything, will accept everything, is good for him. 

"I love you," he mutters into the knot of Mink's still-tense shoulder.

Mink lets out a breath that pulls some sound with it, a bare vocalization; trails his fingertips down Aoba's spine. There's something worshipful in the gesture, soft. "Thank you," he says, because he's that sort of undemonstrative person, but his tone gives its meaning.

They clean up, go back to their usual evening routines, and this time, Aoba doesn't stop in front of his own room. He heads instead to Mink's, Ren trotting after him.

"Aoba?"

"Let me stay here tonight," Aoba says.

Mink inclines his head, opens his door, leads the way.

The next morning, Aoba wakes from an unremarkable dream. He can barely remember what it was about; something with his job, and trying to find somebody's order, but finding things of his own instead. The details slip away even while he tries to remember them.

But he reaches out, puts a hand against that broad back. "Mink?"

"...Mm?"

He didn't have the type of dream that would lead to anything dangerous, lead to the challenges or fear or bringing back of old feelings, feelings too well-earned for comfort. But even this much releases some of that tension, and he thinks they can handle it if it gets there.

"Good morning," he says.

Mink rolls over and smiles at him, and Aoba thinks that he could get used to this.

**Author's Note:**

> @Sumi, all of your prompts for Minao were right up my alley, so I hope you don't mind me trying to include at least references to most of them.


End file.
